Week 1 in Solo

This is the lovely little church we have been attending on Kepatihan Road.

You will notice that the parking lot is empty because few people have cars.  Many have motor bikes and they park them on the side.  We have seen families of four riding on one motor cycle.

The flowers and trees are gorgeous.

 

 These are some of the darling children at piano lessons in the church.  The lessons are free to anyone who would like to come and are taught by Sister Greenway, a senior missionary.  There are also free English classes two evenings every week taught by the local missionaries.

 The keyboards are furnished by the church.  All of the pianists we have seen in the meetings are children or young adults. They play well!

 These becak drivers wanted us to take a ride.  This is just outside our apartment building.  This is a popular, affordable mode of transport for those who do not drive.

 This is a little store front of which there are thousands in Solo.  Many sell prepared food or merchandise of all sorts.

Get ready, get set....

 

Go! 

Motorcycles are the most common form of transportation.  This is early in the morning before Riyadi gets busy. We were out for our morning walk.

We love seeing the school children riding their bikes to school.  They like having their picture taken!

The local police station had this monster in it's parking lot.  Check out the guns on top!

 

This is our local Mosque.  The Muslims are celebrating Ramadan this month.  I'm not sure what it is all about but I do know that they fast from sunrise to sunset, including water, for 30 days!  And we thought we had it hard! 

This is the front of the Paragon Hotel.  Our apartment is on the fourth floor.  There is a parking garage below where Bono, the Greenway's driver, meets us when we are going out.  He parks his motorbike in the garage while driving us around. 

Solo, home sweet home for the next 18 months!

We are living in the apartments above The Paragon Hotel.  While the entrance to the hotel is very beautiful, you can see that the apartment is very spartan.  When we arrived on Friday the 20th we had no refrigerator, no table, no chairs, no dishes, etc.  By the evening of the 21st we had installed the fridge, a washer, a folding table from Lotto Mart, kind of like Costco and a few kitchen items as well as some groceries.  We have one small round sink in the back corner, virtually no counter space, no hot water in any of the sinks, only the shower.  It is not safe to drink the water so we have a water cooler for drinking.

We have about 700 sq. feet, not very effectively organized but clean, kind of, and cool.  We are using the second bathroom as a laundry room where the sink is leaking.  We need our family plumber!  Jason where are you when we need you? This is the snoring room complete with yellow cow sheet and pillows.

The master bedroom is great with a king bed that pretty much takes up all the space.  Interestingly enough our little nest has a nice flat screen tv in this bedroom and in our little kitchen, family room area.

Here is the best part of our nest, the view!  This is the city of Solo as we see it from our windows.

Isn't it beautiful!  The green dome is our local mosque which calls Muslims to prayer over loud speakers 6 times a day.  We really only notice the 4:30 AM call which comes through loud and clear!  We can actually see 3 other domes from our window as well. 

  

We went to church today with the Greenways who have been helping us get settled.  The members of the Solo and the Banjarsari Wards welcomed us warmly and invited us to the pulpit to introduce ourselves and share our testimonies!  The young missionaries helped by translating.  We could speak some in Bahasa Indonesian and they liked that!  After church we attended a baptism with an Indo. style pot luck afterwards.  We loved the food.  "Kami suka makanan Indonesian." (We like Indonesian food.)

We also had our first request for Family History help.  We will meet with a group during Sunday School next week who are planning on a temple trip to Manila in September.

Indonesian

We made it to Indonesia!

Here we are in beautiful Jakarta, Indonesia, after a 26 hour journey.   President Groberg met us at the airport, thank goodness, because we would have been lost without help!  Our first blunder was to overpay the porter by about four times the norm.  Oh well.  We're here to help!

Jakarta is a huge city with skyscrapers next to hovels.  We walked to the grocery store in the evening with Pres. & Sister Groberg to eat in the deli.  We passed street vendors, ramshackle shelters used as homes, beautiful embassy worker homes, stinky streets and a filthy river before we walked into a modern super market called Grand Lucky.

  This is the front of the mission home.  It is very lovely with the mission office above the home.  It is nestled amongst the huge office buildings in the financial district. 

President and Sister Groberg are amazing.  They are doing so much good here in Indonesia.  They oversee 70 young missionaries, 7 senior couples and all the humanitarian aid, educationl support, member support and public affairs going on here with the church.

This is the formal dining room of the mission home.  We have been well taken care of here.   Everything here is very organized and we have been able to meet the office staff and two other senior missionary couples, the Beamans and the Healeys.

We rode to the mall in this bagai.  It is a three wheeled verhicle with just enough room for two passengers.  It's kind of like riding behind a motor cycle but a quick, cheap way to get around if you don't mind being exposed to the heat, the noise and the exhaust of the traffic! 

These are school children in the middle of town.  Notice their uniforms.  They looked like boy scouts to me.  All public schools require uniforms for the students and all take English classes. 

All streets have many food vendors on them and many, many motor cycles and cars.  This is not a typical scene!  The city is very busy and noisy with cars and motorcylces flowing together with very little order. 

Ari, from the mission home, was our driver and helped us get our new cell phones at Blok M, the local mall as well as our Kitas (national ID).  We were so thankful for the help he gave us.

The mall was huge with 6 levels!  You could buy everything from a motorcycle to a foot treatment in a tank of water with baby piranhas that eat the dead skin cells off your feet.  No, we didn't try it!

Good bye to Jakarta on Friday, July 20, 2012

The Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah

We arrived at the Missionary Training Center on July 8th and were given our official missionary badges which we wear wherever we go.  The training was intense and awesome! 

Our wonderful language tutors were Christopher Meek and Bro. Pulver.  Elder and Sister Marteeny were going to Malaysia and had the same tutors.  We had to bear our testimonies of the Gospel in Indonesian in front of about 50 people!  Yikes!  That was humbling.

Bro. Hawkes and Bro. Harmmer taught us "Preach My Gospel".  The role playing was challenging!

We were organized into a District with the Jordans, Edwards, Hohashs and Zolingers.

                                                       Off we go to Jakarta, Indonesia!